


Too Late to Say Now

by Checkerbox



Category: Half-Life
Genre: F/M, inspired by the posting on episode 3, more of a reflective piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15564783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checkerbox/pseuds/Checkerbox
Summary: Somewhere along the way he would have found the courage to say, "I love you".





	Too Late to Say Now

There were a lot of things that Gordon would have liked to say to Alyx, had he another chance.

"I'm not a hero", would have been the first thing out of his mouth. Followed closely by, "You're the hero."

There was nothing in him that was good, he thought. Kill everything in sight, that was the creed that he had come to live by. Kill everything in sight, and stay your hand if it doesn't try to kill you first. If he just so happened to kill things that were hunting members of his own species, that didn't really mean anything. He'd killed plenty of human beings in Black Mesa. It was a maudlin line of thinking that came about during his isolation--among others, seeing the way they smiled at him, it was easy to fall into the trap of believing what they said. That he was some barrier between them and their own extinction. But once alone, able to withdraw into cold logic and thought, he could see himself for what he really was.

He had cried after his first murder, had struggled to keep in his shattered breaths when he witnessed his first failure to save someone, but as his hope dwindled he had lost all illusions that he was in this world for anything but himself. It was Alyx who deserved the praise of being a hero. She was the one that protected people, brought salvation to them with an earnest determination to make it through instead of just an inability to turn back or stop. She was capable of fighting and not struggling so much under the weight of killing that she forsook anything good, she could separate her two realities. She needed no HEV suit, no cold rationalizations, she saved and she inspired, and being around her, that is what made him different. He was only a hero by watching her example.

It was a little more complicated but he figured he'd also be able to manage a, "the thought of you dying was the first thing to terrify me since I arrived here."

It was a truth he had trouble admitting to himself, though it was hard to deny when the sight of her wounds had made him truly, physically ill. It was something she needed to know. He was not made of stone. The revelation had come as much as a shock to him as anyone else. Gordon had been left by all that made him happy, been abandoned so many times that he had stopped trying to count it out, and he had grown comfortable in being one person, alone. He had grown comfortable with friends who had more important and interesting things to do, and mentors too distracted to pay attention, and allies who were too weak to follow him, and he had mistaken that for happiness. And then he had been forced to compare the familiarity of that loneliness with what he had come to know with her, and he felt inside him a shuddering, gaping emptiness.

"I would follow you anywhere," would come next.

Gordon had become accustomed to the idea of his life being a series of tasks to complete, with an overarching goal that he had no real hope of reaching. The nature of the tasks had changed, would always change, but in the end it wasn't that different to who he was even before the incident had occurred. Do well in school, go to college, go to even more college, get the job at Black Mesa, do as your superiors tell you to do, put on the suit, push in the crystal, kill, run, survive, protect. It was a life he could find meager satisfaction in completing, but never true contentment. It was a world divorced from his wants, his desires, merely playing a role that was outlined to him, and the light at the end of that particular tunnel would always be just a little bit too far for him to reach.

But if being with Alyx could be a goal in and of itself--then he would never need to feel wanting even slogging through the endless meat grinder of whatever foe he happened to draw up against next. If he could make her his world, then as long as they were together it didn't matter what happened to him, or what he was forced to do.

And somewhere along the way he would have found the courage to say "I love you".

 

Floating in this psychic darkness, he tried not to conjure thoughts like, "She left you behind". He preferred to think about the joy that would surely be on her face whenever they would meet again, whenever she saw that he was still alive. He was not sure if he would be able to conjure the expression himself, or if the sentiment would remain trapped inside him like so many had before it.

But he would find the words. "I love you". If he had the chance he would have said it endlessly, over and over again. And he would add that he was sorry. For what, he was not sure. There were a lot of things he could take responsibility for, right down to being in the test chamber that day, what felt like a lifetime ago. All of the things she had thought he was, and all of the things that he had proven himself not to be.

If he had another chance he wouldn't let the blood on his gloves stop him from holding her when she cried.

The last thing he would tell her was, "I don't even mind dying, if it's with you."

…No.

As sentimental as he felt in the calming darkness, he knew himself enough to know that it wouldn't have been the truth. And that it wasn't what she needed to hear, anyway.

If he had another chance, the last thing he would have told Alyx would have been "You can't trust him, he is not human, he is a thing in a human suit".

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I was a more active fan of Half-Life, and it's been a while since I even played the game, but it still has a place in my heart and I still feel sad that the completion of its story appears to be an impossibility now.


End file.
